Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) recently organised the 8th India Health Summit (IHS) in New Delhi from December 1 to 2, 2011, to address the burgeoning concern about the need to ensure healthcare access in India. The event was supported by India Health Progress, an independent initiative of institutions and individuals aligned towards ensuring universal access to healthcare in India.
The summit brought together health experts and industry leaders to elicit their views on aspects such as accessibility and outreach and health insurance. Aman Gupta, principal advisor, India Health Progress said, “All stakeholders with a role to play in healthcare delivery should look at access to healthcare from a holistic perspective. The Government should look beyond price control whereas health insurance players should look beyond in-patient departments and hospitals should look beyond curative care.”
Stating facts from a research study conducted by India Health Progress in collaboration with Dr D Y Patil Medical College, Pune, Gupta added that inadequate infrastructure and insufficient health insurance are the prime hurdles for healthcare access in the country, imposing a heavy social and economic burden on the urban and rural population alike.
India’s healthcare industry is poised to reach US$ 55 billion by 2020. However, many healthcare challenges still remain unaddressed. Despite various efforts, advancements and improvements, the Indian health system continues to be characterised by inequalities in healthcare delivery, meagre health financing, inadequate access to high-quality health services and manpower, each worsened by the rapid rise in the disease burden.
Dr David Taylor, professor of Pharmaceutical and Public Health Policy at the School of Pharmacy, University of London, said, “The emergence of modern India as both a major producer of pharmaceuticals and a world leader in other areas of knowledge-based enterprise is today an important example of a country seeking to achieve a better internal policy balance between equity and innovation. This has involved both movements towards accepting the strengthened intellectual property related provisions needed to foster research-based industry, and new attempts to address concerns about the high–potentially ruinous– out-of-pocket medical costs incurred by the poor and India’s notable lack of an adequately-funded public health service.”
Further he pointed out that in the latter area, initiatives such as the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM) and the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojna health insurance scheme are indicative of progress yet in the medium to long term more radical approaches to funding a national healthcare system to assure the ‘right to health’ embodied in the country’s constitution may well prove vital.
Despite the rich-poor, urban-rural divide in the country, what greatly affects the healthcare situation is not a mere monetary issue, but of accessibility. The authorities for long have been skirting its policies around price control, yet ‘universal access to healthcare’ seems to elude India.
Recent studies suggest that inadequate infrastructure is denying patient access to quality healthcare.
Ground realities substantiate that healthcare access cannot be improved unless significant barriers such as lack of infrastructure, trained medical staff, primary healthcare facilities and education are focused on.
The day concluded with industry stakeholders orchestrating the need for collaborating efforts to bridge the rural and urban divide, developing innovative products and models of service and delivery, increasing health insurance cover, incentivising healthcare personnel, learning from successful global health practices and paving the way for universal healthcare access in the country.